In various adhesive applications, incorporating air bubbles into a fluid adhesive may create an adhesive assembly having an increased volume without significantly decreasing the effectiveness of the adhesive for a particular intended use. For example, the effectiveness of certain adhesives used in the production of corrugated board is not significantly decreased by incorporating air bubbles into the adhesive to form an adhesive solution. These adhesives form bonds between objects (e.g., paper materials) having similar strengths regardless of whether the adhesive solution does or does not have air bubbles incorporated throughout. Therefore, incorporating air bubbles into an adhesive to form an adhesive solution may provide a cost savings measure by decreasing the amount of the adhesive needed for a particular application.
Historically, heavy machinery having a plurality of moving parts and requiring a significant amount of externally supplied power has been utilized to incorporate air bubbles into adhesive solutions. These machines supply air to a volume of adhesive and utilize one or more rotors to apply shear forces to the adhesive and air to form small air bubbles throughout the adhesive volume and thereby form an adhesive-air solution. However, these machines are often large and include a plurality of moving components necessary to create shear forces within the solution. Therefore, facilities utilizing these machines often must reserve a significant amount of space to store and use these machines. Moreover, because these machines require externally supplied power to operate, generally due to the electrical motors utilized to generate shear forces within the adhesive, the operating costs of these machines make them impractical in small-scale applications.
Therefore, a need exists for an air incorporation system having a small size and requiring low external power requirements that may be used to incorporate air bubbles into adhesive solutions.